Posts tagged bailout
Walberg, Allen Seek Trump DOJ Assistance in Recovering Bailout Payments that Funded Pensions for Dead People
February 21, 2025 // The Committee’s oversight work highlighted gross mismanagement of the Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program that was included in the American Rescue Plan Act. Taxpayers funded pensions for dead people to the tune of more than $164 million for 33 plans that have paid the money back. However, more than 30 other union plans have yet to pay back any of the overpayments. In the letter, the chairmen write: “As part of this investigation, the Committee is seeking information about the steps DOJ is taking to ensure that taxpayer money is recovered after the Biden-Harris administration made improper payments to multiemployer pension plans."
After Democrats lost the working class, union leaders say it’s time to ‘reconstruct the Democratic Party’
November 18, 2024 // “We can’t communicate with every nonunion laborer. We can only communicate with a portion of our members,” said Booker, who thinks Democrats could have performed better with a fierier populist message on the economy and a cooler one on cultural issues that make some of his members feel like Democrats are out-of-touch elitists. “A lot of our members own guns. A lot of our members hunt.” Booker said that when he toured job sites this year, he heard about inflation, immigration and the demise of the Keystone Pipeline, which would have created jobs for his members but was killed for environmental concerns — all issues that played to the GOP’s favor.
U.S. Taxpayers To Bail Out Failing Musicians’ Union Pension Fund With $1.5 Billion, PBGC Announces
July 15, 2024 // “As of July 15, 2024, PBGC has announced approval of about $61.9 billion in SFA to plans that cover about 1,076,000 workers, retirees, and beneficiaries,” the PBGC stated in its announcement. In June, Democrats stated they planned to use the taxpayer-funded pension bailout scheme to rally union voters in the upcoming November general elections.
PBGC Just Announced Nearly $2.3 Billion Will Go To 4 Underfunded Union Pensions
June 22, 2024 // On Thursday, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced that it had approved the bailouts of four underfunded union pension plans totaling nearly $2.4 billion. Of the nearly $2.4 billion, the largest payments of taxpayer dollars will go to a grocery union pension and a printers’ union (which is now part of the Teamsters).
House probe starts after $127M in bailout funds paid to dead Teamsters’ pension plan
January 16, 2024 // Foxx and Good also said the “mismanagement casts doubt on PBGC’s implementation of the larger program, the $91 billion Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program,” saying Central States had sent a follow-up letter to the inspector general’s office that implied it would use the money “as their personal slush fund” to help it “achieve its statutory objective of remaining solvent through 2051.” Inspector General Nicholas Novak previously told The Post that there was no clawback function available to PBGC as part of the American Rescue Plan, through which the Biden administration provided more than $80 billion to other multi-employer pension funds.
US Overpaid Teamsters Pension Counting Dead Participants
November 3, 2023 //
Feds: Carpenters union gets $183M of stimulus to restore cut pensions
August 18, 2023 // The retirement plan covering nearly 5,400 Southwest Ohio union carpenters got a nearly $183 million government bailout on Tuesday, according to an announcement by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The money comes from a program aimed at shoring up pension plans, created as part of the broader stimulus package enacted in 2021 in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. The money will benefit members of the Southwest Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters Pension Plan, which in 2019, slashed pension benefits for thousands of members by an average of 18% to remain solvent. PBGC’s approval enables the plan to restore benefits previously suspended and to make payments to retirees to cover prior benefit suspensions, the federally chartered corporation said in a statement. The funding will enable the plan to pay retirement benefits without reduction for many years into the future.
Biden Shoveled $36 Billion In Taxpayer Funds To Bail Out Teamsters For Mismanaged Pensions
March 5, 2023 // Lost in all of this has been one spectacular giveaway: $100,000 per beneficiary of the Central States Pension Fund (CSPF). The fund provides pension benefits to nearly 360,000 private-sector workers and retirees, mostly Teamsters Union members. U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, called the deal out in December, noting it was “the largest private pension bailout in American history” that benefited only “a tiny minority of workers.” He suggested it resulted from the insanity of “allowing those who mismanaged pensions to determine whether their funds qualify for taxpayer assistance with no safeguards.” The $36 billion comes almost two years after the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. That “rescue” was the Biden administration’s Covid spending bonanza. Biden signed it into law in the spring of 2021, when the economy was already well into recovery. The housing market was booming. The stock market was on a steady upward climb. It was obvious that the “rescue” would cause inflation. It was obvious Democrats were taking advantage of an opportunity to give away public largesse. And did they ever. Lest we doubt the ongoing influence of the Teamsters in American politics, the recent $36 billion giveaway says it all. It says to the union bosses, who make up half of the CSPF board: “You can watch the pension fund’s health decline for decades. You can make unrealistic promises to employees. You can keep the plan below 75 percent funded. You can depend on a pyramid concept where imaginary new members keep coming in to pay for retired members. None of that matters now. The politicians you own will bail you out with the public’s money. In fact, you can take such largesse that union workers in other multi-employer plans get left with only crumbs. Write yourself a check. And, as a bonus, we won’t ask you to change anything.”